There are those who believe that crafty political operatives plant these narratives with a friendly talking head, and I'm sure that happens. But I also think that misinterpretation, sloppiness, deadline pressure and quite possibly recreational drug abuse all go into the creation of bogus narratives.

Well, it is hard to add much to that except to point out the obvious example of Rush the Lush...

And seriously, crafty is being kind to some of those "operatives", mean-spirited and badly raised would be closer to describing some of them. Now can we all just stop regurgitating their BS? God, that would be a nice world!

Here's an example of a bogus narrative: When Hillary Clinton finally conceded, the story went around that many former Clinton supporters were going to vote for John McCain rather than the vile Barack Obama. Undoubtedly this idea was fueled by understandably bitter election-night comments from people who'd worked really hard for Clinton and were fueled by fatigue, frustration and frittatas.

But mostly people came to their senses after a good night's sleep, and never did any national poll indicate that Clinton-prone Democrats were going to defect to Walnuts!, as McCain is called in several political blogs. Some viral videos appeared on YouTube in which several women, allegedly Clinton supporters, said rude things about Obama, but the reality quotient of these videos was questionable at best. (Those elephants painting flowers, by contrast, are entirely real.)

Now to try to not violate Fair Use I won't post more, but he does go on about the hiring of Patti Solis Doyle, and Al Gore a bit, but he also tells those who feel the hiring is a "slap in the face" to chill out. Just sayin' :)

In any case I think Jon gets to the heart of the poo flinging that has been going on and how we contribute to it by flinging virtual poo all f'ing day on blogs. Have I flung my share? Sure have. Now how many others will fess up?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg i?file=/chronicle/archive/2008/06/19/DDB V11AREB.DTL